This article examines China’s urbanization, drawing on the case of Fujian province. It finds that the lower rate of urbanization than of nonfarm employment and industrialization is partly explained by flaws in the current method of calculating the extent of urbanization. It demonstrates that the characteristics of Chinese urbanization differ in cities and towns of varying administrative ranks, and shows that the desirability of controlling population mobility and the development of large cities is questionable. The case of Fujian suggests that more attention needs to be paid to other issues of broad significance in China, such as the role of government in urbanizing, the challenge of transforming a low-value-added economy, and how to address the socioeconomic repercussions of the urbanization process. Especially important is the under-emphasized and as yet unanswered core question: how to create nonfarm jobs.
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